Notice of industrial action by nurses in hospital expected

INDUSTRIAL action by nurses is looming at the Mid-Western Regional Hospital over the way the HSE is tackling overcrowding.

A seven-day notice is expected to be served today.

Yesterday the HSE blamed nurses for holding up progress in freeing up beds, while the nurses in turn blamed the hospital consultants.

The HSE claim that due to outdated practices at the hospital, up to 44 of the hospital’s 530 beds are being occupied at one time by patients who should have been discharged.

However, a nurses spokesperson said they are not the problem and actively are participating in the introduction of a new system which will allow nurses discharge patients.

The Irish Nurses Organisation (INO) say the problem is with consultants who are not “playing ball” to allow nurses discharge patients.

Patients from emergency departments& are now being moved to general wards rather than being kept on trolleys in emergency departments& when overcrowding begins to develop.

The INO said this change was brought in without any consultation with their members.

One HSE source said: “A&E has not been seen as something of an isolated unit and not integrated with the rest of the hospital. The changes now require everybody in the hospital to pull together and share the burden when A&E becomes overcrowded. What is now happening is in accordance with international best practice. The hospital must function as one totally integrated facility and everybody must share the burden when overcrowding becomes a problem.This is in the interests of all patients. Basically everybody must pull together.”

John O’Brien, national director with the HSE has criticised the proposed action of the nurses in a letter to the INO industrial relations officer, Mary Fogarty.

Mr O’Brien stated: “Based on the studies on bed use in Limerick we estimate that up to 44 beds on any given day are occupied by patients who do not need either acute care or any form of complex community or residential care package. This is the key issue which we must address together in the same way we have engaged on the symptom of the problem-emergency department waits.

“The situation on December 1 was addressed in a very short space of time once all concerned worked together to free up beds by discharging patients. This has always been our experience in the past when similar situations arose – everybody put their shoulder to the wheel, worked together, and the problem was sorted almost instantaneously. This needs to become the norm in the way we do business.”

Mr O’Brien said he fully accepted that implementing change was never easy.

He added: “We have a choice to make as to whether we stay rooted in the past and continue to fail ourselves and our patients or to show leadership in making the hard decisions and confront the impediments to progress step by step. I firmly hope that we can work together towards the latter approach.”

INO industrial relations officer Mary Fogarty said they had been working with the HSE on the overcrowding issue for the past three months since the emergency services in the Mid-West were reconfigurated.

This change centralised emergency department& &treatment for most of the week at the Mid-Western. Ms Fogarty said they were the only union to engage in these talks. &

Ms Fogarty said the INO had been participating in the ongoing talks on nurse facilitated discharge of patients.